an insider's perspective, technical tips n' tricks in the era of the IT Revolution

August 27, 2013

VMworld 2013: Next-Gen Backup

The amount of work that the EMC backup team does with VMware directly and with VMware customers is pretty cool if you ask me. While it’s early days of VDP still, the idea of “native and integrated” backup in vSphere is the way to go, particularly for SMB customers.

The work over the last couple of years in developing VDP has paid dividends for larger customers too. My brothers and sisters at EMC’s Backup and Recovery teams are proud, and like to share – thank you for doing it (and all the great HoL work at VMworld!). Some of these demos below are great – mainstream, and will help everyone. Some are OFF THE WALL, crazy secret cool stuff :-)

READ ON dear reader!!!

Ok – demo extravaganza begins now….

Not only did Avamar 7 work with the same vCenter web client extension as VDP, the Self-Service recovery capability improved (again, gains from the joint work) – which you can see in the demo below:

Also, as VM workloads continue to grow, the super-duper CBT on backup function of Avamar continues to kick butt when it comes to backup, but there was a need to also deliver a faster restore for LARGE virtual machines. Again, in Avamar 7, there’s a new “I want it NOW” option when coupled with Data Domain. This is very cool – instantly mounting an NFS datastore just for that VM (DD has this “file-level granular” idea built in at a fundamental level) – this feature is called “VM Instant Access”. Check it out below:

If you look back at VMworld 2011, I did a mock up demo of an idea we were cranking on called “vCloud Protector” looking at the model of “Backup as a service”, that would integrate with what is now the vCloud Suite. For a fun time-warp, click here. The best things start out as just an idea :-)

Yup, that’s real. It’s still not in full production, but if you request the “data protection” capability in vCHS, this prototype, this “vCloud Plugin” sets up a default “freemium” tier, and uses a federated, distributed backup appliance. The full combination of funky automation that goes into this is called “Project Mater”. Lots of integration using tons of cool IP, including Puppet, Rabbit MQ and more. This also depends on Data Domain as the worlds most efficient data protection tier.

For those following along, this is “yet another” project with a code name along the lines of disney pixar movies (Toy Story was VDP, Wall-E was VDP Advanced). That team (yes, I’m talking to you Clint) needs to get out more :-)

All teasing aside, the always awesome Clint Kitson, didn’t stop there. He’s also integrated Avamar with vCOPs and LogInsight (also useful for that service provider use case above). He’s a rockstar, and has published all the “HOWTO” here, and you can see a demo below:

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Disclaimer

The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by Dell Technologies and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Dell Technologies or any part of Dell Technologies. This is my blog, it is not an Dell Technologies blog.